Poll

I have put up a poll on the right side of blog to gather some information on who visits and enjoys this blog. I try to use this blog as a journal of our events but have gotten little response as of late and this has cause me to rethink the way I journal. I don't post as much as I would like but try to highlight the fun things we do as a family... I'm not sure if my frequency level affects how this blog is read or not. I know a lot of you read via google reader and that's cool I'm just trying to get an idea of the audience and enjoyability (is that a word?) level. So please take a minute and respond to the poll so I can either continue or change strategies.

Thanks,

Christmas at the Andersons

Christmas is my second favorite Holiday, my first being Thanksgiving. (I love that you only have to buy good food for Thanksgiving, cause I stress out about what to get almost everyone except Kira and my mom) We spent this Christmas at our home here in Vegas. It's the second year we have done this and I have to say that I LOVE IT!

I don't want any of our family to take this wrong because we love them A LOT but I love how quiet and low key our Christmas' have been these last two years. We have been lucky to have GramJan and PapaMike (my mom & dad) to come up and hang out with us. Before they got here though we decided it would be a great tradition to go to Buzz BBQ for a Christmas Eve lunch. Then we took Kira to the park to play to make sure she got nice and tired for Christmas Eve.

This year GramJan and PapaMike got here earlier than last and after some internet searching and a making a couple of phone calls we decided that In N Out was a great place to get Christmas Eve Dinner (cause other than McDonalds and some places like that it was the only place open) So off we went for our Cheese burgers and Fries and had fun catching up. Once home, Kira got to open a gift from Grandma Jetta and Grandpa Alan so she could call and let them know how much she liked it all




My mom and I decided we needed to get a gallon of milk but before I left I wanted to get Jacob all the stuff that Santa dropped off early... only to slowly realize that I couldn't find it. Then I had this awful flashback that I threw a Target bag away and even though I thought it was trash in there that maybe it wasn't trash after all and I threw away ALL of Santa's stocking stuffers... OH NO! So we were off to Walmart anyway, I'll just pick them up for Santa... we drive to Walmart only to find it has been closed since 8 (it is now 9:15) I call Target (since I know it's Santas FAVORITE place to shop for those sorts of things) they are closed. So we end up at Walgreens, cause they are open.... well the rest of Vegas was there too. Only one parking spot open and it was shear craziness inside. But we managed to replace all of Santa's gifts and buy some necessities for the weekend (i.e Mt. Dew and Dr. Pepper .... oh yeah and some milk) We got back home hung out and watched some tv and went to bed. Santa came and we woke up about 8:30 and came out to this...

Kira got a Monkey Pillow Pet and LOVES IT, it has slept with her every night so far. (his name is George)

She got some other cool monkey things and was so excited about everything she opened.

We tried to follow the Anderson tradition of one gift at a time in order of age (youngest to oldest) but Kira's gifts outnumbered ours about 6 to 1 so Kira opened like 3 or 4 and we opened one and so on.

She got some cool dress up stuff like butterfly wings and tutus.

She got a really cool Belle costume, i need to hem it but she loves it.

I got this super cool jewelry box that I'm excited about... it's all ready to be hung up and be put to use (hint hint honey)

Kira in her glasses from Santa

After we opened gifts, our family is so good to us, we had breakfast and started on Christmas Lunch. We made the same Ham recipe as last year, Turkey, sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, green beans, rolls and other great stuff. As we were pulling together dinner I found Santa's stash hanging out in a kitchen cupboard, right were I left it, in an effort to not wake up Jacob, I hid it there and since it's a place I hadn't used before I couldn't remember where I put that stuff...

It was a great Christmas and we are so blessed to have everything we were given and everything we have. We wish you all the best for 2011 and look forward to reading about your families this year.

'til next time

BOISE STATE BOISE STATE BOISE STATE

(This picture was taken the beginning of 2010... look how much she has grown!)

For those of you who may not know Jacob served in the Idaho Boise mission, and while he never actually served in Boise at. all. He still loves the Boise State Football team. So when he knew that Boise State was coming down to play the Utes he really really really wanted to go but since tickets were 50 bucks a seat and all the good seats were gone we decided that the Pep Rally at Freemont Street would be the second best thing.


It was raining just a little bit as we were walking up. (Thanks bytheway to the old Japanese Woman for pointing that out to us and then looking at Kira like we were abusing her by taking her out in the spinkles with an umbrella and going to the covered part of the street, buy anyway)

I knew as we were getting closer that Kira was going to have a problem with the noise. They had both the Ute Band and the Boise Band and they were playing throughout the Pep Rally. Add to that the fans and cheerleaders/flag-girls/dancers and it was a lot of noise. She whined and cried about it UNTIL the Boise State Pimp (yeah, I said Pimp, he can be seen two pictures down) handed her some necklaces in the Boise State colors and then we got this smile.....

Then she added to her collection and come home with 4 necklaces. She wore them all week leading up to Christmas


The rain stopped during the Pep Rally and we had a great time cheering for the team who won their Bowl Game. With Boise being moved into the same conference as UNLV we are really looking forward to attending a Boise State Game....

We must be CRAZY!

So, one day my sister-in-law, Valerie (Jacob's sister) said, "Hey, I want to do a girls weekend up in Vegas, we'll invite out other sister-in-law (Sabrina) and just have some fun!"..... Sounded good to me! So we picked a weekend, tweaked the participants a little (Sabrina) is a super busy lady! And up they came. (Natalie who is 6, Kyla who is 7, Val and Carrie who I won't age because after 25 it's just not nice)

On Friday they met us at our church where we were having our congregation's Christmas Party. After a little singing we thought we would go hit the Bellagio, see the Christmas Display and enjoy the Christmas themed Water Show...

This is the Bellagio Christmas Display. Most everything is made of flower or some other plant material.

Then we walked down to see the fountains. This is a side view but the kids wanted see it from right in front, so we walked down the rest of the way... Which was quite an adventure, making sure your own kid and someone else's kid doesn't get hit by some crazy Vegas taxi driver took a little energy and lots of holding hands!

Here are the 3 girls waiting for the next show to start.

This show (they are different every time) was really cool! It started with fog, which was beautiful with the instrumental Christmas music.

Then we walked all the way around the Bellagio because 1 it has a wall separating the sidewalk from the street and 2- it made it so that us big girls could window shop.

The little girls window shopped too!


On Saturday we woke up and got ready to see the Secret Garden at the Mirage. And we had a ton of fun! Seeing the dolphins and the white lions and tigers and all those fun things!

The White Lions at the Secret Garden

The dolphins hanging out. They have 3 generations of dolphins in this tank

After the Secret Garden we drove over to the Silverton to try and see Santa, which didn't work out with 1 hour lines! But we did get to see the Mermaid. You may remember me blogging about the mermaid before, (actually i looks like we hit all the same spots in March) I don't have any pictures from this trip because my camera batteries died... but the girls loved it!

Then it was over to Menchies for frozen yogurt and home for playtime, dinner, baths and bedtime. Kyla and Natalie went to church with us on Sunday and were VERY WELL BEHAVED!

I know I say this ALL THE TIME!!! BUT I LOVE that Kira has cousins and that even though we are not in California anymore we still live close enough to have fun weekends from time to time. Hopefully Sabrina can make it up next time and maybe Dallin will get his turn to visit us in Vegas soon.

Thanksgiving Weekend

This year we decided to head down to California for Thanksgiving. We were excited to be able to see family. On Wednesday afternoon we headed down and stopped in Corona for Miguel Jrs. (Real Mexican food- no Good food - yes)

Then we headed down to Newport Beach and got to stay with Auntie "M", Uncle Bill AND Maggie! Thursday morning we woke up to eggs and toast and Jacob, Kira and I took turns getting our hair did.... Kira got a trim, Jacob got a cut and I got a cut and a color (yep, my hair is now more brown than red and I'm loving it! - Jacob not so much)

Then we cleaned up and headed to Papa's house for Thanksgiving. This was the first Thanksgiving without my Grams and her presence was missed but Gram Jan and Papa Mike did a great job with the food and I got to laugh with my Uncle Bruce so we had a great time!!!

On Friday we headed out to Corona for cousin pictures! My sister-in-law arranged to have some cousin pictures taken. So we got the kids all gussied up and out to Riverside we drove.....

Here are a couple of pictures of the kids I took before the professionals got to them

This is almost all the Andersons... we are missing Elizabeth and Tommy, but they are in Taiwan so we got what we could. Cute Nat Nat smiling at us!

These are the goggle faces from looking at the Ducks!



Angee (angry) Kira and Rinny Rin Rin waiting for their turns.

We had a great time with pictures, then headed off to pick up some pizza and wings for dinner... Here are Nat Nat, Kira and Kyla having fun while waiting for Auntie Val to pick up food

I have said this before and I will say it again... I LOVE that she has cousins!!! She always has such a good time with them!

On Saturday we took Kira to Fashion Island Mall to go see Santa. We had a lot of fun with Auntie "M" , Gram Jan and Auntie Korie. Korie took pictures of us while we were there which is kinda fun.

Here is me and Kira checking out the really cool Koi pond they have there. We were checking out this huge Koi that would flip is back tail up out of the water. I think I thought it was cooler than she did but she's pacifying me :)

Here is Kira with Santa. This Santa is her old friend (see here) and she walked right up to him and said "HI SANTA!" and when he asked her what she wanted she told him Sunglasses!!! So I need to make sure Santa get's those glasses for her!

Here she is on some huge presents they had in front of their 100 foot Christmas Tree. It was pretty awesome and that courtyard always brings back memories of a Young Adult Dance we had there some 10 years ago!

Here is Kira with Auntie M, talking about her visit with Santa

And with GramJan looking at the village they had there!

We spent Sunday with Jacob's parent's, and Kira had fun playing with Nat Nat and Sarah. We love seeing everyone and wish we could fit in everyone every time we are down but hopefully we will get to see you all at some point.

We wish you all the best this holiday season and we will hopefully be back soon to let you know of our goings on....

'Til next time!

A Walk About

You probably can't tell by looking at me but I try to walk every week day. I don't get to do it everyday BUT like I said, I try most days and today was no exception. What makes today special is that Kira asked to bring my camera along. Now, i don't normally like her to use my camera. We got a good deal on it but I still don't like the idea of it breaking... so I told her she could use it IF she kept it around her neck. She agreed, so I made a make-shift necklace for her and off we went. Kira usually talks almost the WHOLE WAY...sometimes she sings, usually the ABC's or some not quite right version of "Give Said the Little Stream" or You are my sunshine....but today she took pictures... and I'm going to share them with you...





On the way down.


On the way out.

Her very first pair of Chuck Taylors.....

Her steering wheel... she does drive sometimes too



Walking down Patrick

I'm not sure these walks are really helping me.... but even if they don't.... I'm glad that I do it everyday... cause I get to spend time with my Boppa and THAT IS DEFINITLY ACCOMPLISHING SOMETHING!!!